Claiming that the iPod Nano has a widespread propensity for scratching easily, lawyers this week filed a class action suit against Apple Computer on behalf of those who have purchased the diminutive music player.

There's actually some truth to this whole thing. I know someone with a nano, and thirty minutes after taking it out of the box, it was notably scratched. I was with him the entire time, and all he did was hold it, set it down on the table, hand it to me to play with, and then put it in hi *empty* jacket packet for a total of like 5 minutes. I had heard about the scratching, so I asked him to look at it, to see if there was any evidence of what I thought was a load of crap. Yes, Virginia, there is a scratch problem. So, I decided to do some more testing on my own. (He said that he didn't mind, since he was going to get it replaced under the warrentee if it got too scratched.)

First thing I tried was gently rubbing the side of it with the same cloth I use on my glasses (it's a lens cloth from walmart, works rather well.) Yes, there were noticable more scratches in the corner after I finished. I tried felt, and then the cotton cloth from my shirt. All of them left fine scratches, except the cotton, which really seemed to scratch the hell out of it. I had my friend come over, and asked him if there was one more thing I could try: I wanted to rub the side of it along the carpet for 5 seconds. I was gentle about it, trying to simulate normal wear and tear. Man, the thing looked like shit when I was done.

My friend has sense decided that sending it back under warrentee is too much, so he did what he did with his old ipod: he bought some large tie-dye stickers, and cut them to fit the nano, and made a home made skin for it. Over the screen (which I'd been careful to keep pristine) he put a screen protector from his palm-pilot, cut to fit. (That went on before the skin, so you couldn't tell it wasn't stock. Now, he has a sweet looking nano, with no worries about scratches! However, there is some truth to all this.